Ballads about dogs, horses and people flow easily out of Frank Ritcey’s pen.
The part-time Rocky Mountain guide and oil worker said it was his upbringing in British Columbia’s Wells Gray Park that launched his love of nature and the simple life.
“My grandfather was a trapper in there in 1941 before it was a park,” he said. “It was 1969 before we got electricity.”
Two years ago the cowboy poet gave Lloyd Bishop a copy of one ballad and was starting to think his friend was rude for not commenting on it when Bishop called him over to listen to a tape on which he had put the poem to music.
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Since then the two have collaborated on 13 songs that Bishop recorded in his home studio in Clearwater, B.C. They printed 1,000 CDs.
Many are based on Ritcey’s guiding life in the mountains. It’s a short season from mid-August to the end of October, taking Europeans and Americans on horse treks and hunting parties.
“It’s a lifestyle that may not be around too much longer,” Ritcey said because it’s hard to find horse wranglers for $125 a day when the oil patch pays double that.
Ritcey often recites his humorous poems to the guiding guests. After he wrote poems about a dog and a horse he liked, the animals died.
Ritcey said with a smile that his friends asked him not to include them in his next ballad.
For more information, e-mail bigmeadowstars@hotmail.com.
